Features include selectable absolute phase inversion performed in the digital domain, which should (and to our ears, does) mean no unwanted side effects, and an input for an external high-precision clock.
The latter parallels a similar facility found on some other players, from Teac Esoteric and dCS, for example, and makes the SA-7S1 capable of locking onto clock signals of 44.1, 88.2 and 176.4kHz presented to a rear panel BNC.
There is no Marantz-branded clock available, however, even in Japan, and we didn’t have any third-party clock to try. Our prior experience with such devices is that some players – for example Esoteric – tend to benefit, but in other cases the result is merely a difference, which is difficult to describe as better or worse.
The obvious quid pro quo is the additional cost of the clock, which is likely to be of the same order as the player itself.
The power supply is described as having a choke input. This is nothing to do with choke regulation, Musical Fidelity style, which some suggest make amplifiers sound as though their bass and treble run independently, like having two amplifiers in one box – an odd, and slightly disconcerting sensation.
We discovered during conversation with Ken that he has had a similar experience. The configuration used here is optimised for consistency across the frequency spectrum, and for overall dynamic range, which in his words is “difficult to do”.
The display is said to be a low noise design, though it looks like a conventional enough fluorescent design. Standard optical and coaxial digital outputs are available from CD only, but they can be switched off when not required.
And like virtually all self-respecting high-end players these days, the analogue audio output is available in balanced and single-ended form. The SACD section delivers text readouts from text-enabled SA discs, but this sadly doesn’t extend to CD Text, which would have been good. So would a smoother scrolling text display, but that’s just being pedantic.
The SA-7S1 also has user-selectable output filters – similar to those available on the SA11-S1 – which involves three filters for CD, which also have an influence on the SACD output, see later. The SACD settings include the nuclear option of no active filtering at all.{mospagebreak title=Marantz SA-7S1 review page 2}
There is also a DC filter (a high-pass network whose roll-off is set at 1.7Hz) plus a noise-shaping option that can be selected. The digital outputs can also be deselected, which is worth doing.
It goes without saying that everything Marantz knows has gone into reducing jitter. The player includes a fully shielded Super Ring (sic) transformer, and fully balanced internal signal architecture.
As usual, Marantz specifies a discrete HDAM output buffer, known as the HDAM-SA2, which offers a short, direct signal path and fully balanced topology; a more refined circuit than in previous versions.
The player looks wonderful, and handles discs well, with faster disc identification speeds than many SACD players, and rapid track access times, too. The remote control will also handle the basic functions of Marantz amplifiers, and is generally well-designed, though we’ve seen better.
Building an appropriate system around the player was clearly going to be a key to assessing its performance, but luckily with The Collection getting under way at around the same time, this was not too much of a problem.
